I Just Noticed

I just noticed that the passage for yesterday from Matthew was the passage that I had to write my big New Testament exegesis paper about. Look closely at the three verses in Matthew. Matthew 5:17-19. Now imagine trying to write 20 pages about what it means. Twenty pages about jots and tittles. Small strokes and small letters. Imagine.

Now imagine that this one passage has had at least 50 books written about it. I found so much information that I couldn’t even read it all. Apparently, jots and tittles are important. Really what I think is important is: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” In fulfilling the Law and the Prophets, Jesus embodied the entire corpus of the Law and the Prophets; he literally became the words. And I think the concept of obedience to the commandments is important, too. We should pay attention to the commandments, as I have written before: it is about memorizing them and incorporating them into our lives. It is about living the spirit of them, and then when we evaluate ourselves, we will see that by living in the spirit, we have accomplished living to the letter: every jot and tittle. We, too, will embody the words. Our lives will become a visual spectacle of the Law and the Prophets, and not because we tell everyone we are doing “What Jesus Would Do.” We won’t need to tell people because they will know.